Description

Chris Pendleton and I sat down and he showed off the amazing new World Wide Telescope and Bing Maps integration. The
WorldWide Telescope application allows you to view most of the features available in the Silverlight client right in Bing Maps. Yes, the WWT provides real time information about how the space is moving over the Earth. This provides context for where celestial
entities are in real time if you were to look up at the night sky. Upon launching the WWT Bing Maps App, you may get so excited and just want to see SOMETHING, so just jump right in with stars.For more info check out
Chris's BLOG POST.

The Discussion

The team(s) are definitely living up to their potential. These are things that were predicted if you read the Channel9 threads on Photosynth etc.... It's amazing how quickly the team is putting everything together to match the vision. Good job, high praise
for you all.

I would likve to praise this as well. Bing maps is getting better and better. I still find the performance of the silverlight version lacking at times. It is not as smooth as it needs to be to be "wow, that is perfect / impressive beyond anything else out
there". I can't smoothly drive around a city using street side. Plus the underground city in Chicago freaks the maps out. One moment I will be top side, then all of the sudden I am on the under city.... Multi layered roads not tested?

Worldwide telescope is still best viewed through its fully featured program.

Please Channel 9, address the topic of Bing censoring its search results at the direction of the ( unelected ) government in China. Google is doing the right thing by pushing back against restrictions on the individual's access to information. As it is,
I cannot in good conscience use Bing.

Laura, I'm sorry to tell you this but the "name a star after me" thing is a scam.

They are not affiliated with any international body that names stars. They just publish it in their own material and say "look, it's named after you (according only to us)". It would be exactly like me picking up rocks and charging people money to name
them and giving them an "official" certificate that it had named it after them.

So I trust you are also not doing business with any other company that plays by the rules China lays down in order to operate there.

I'm sure it's possible to rationalize that a search engine is different than shoes or computer parts but that's a shaky distinction. A company could only do what Google is doing if they don't have much to lose. If Google was splitting the market share
with Baidu there is no way they would pull out. As it is they had a very small percentage of the search market.

Compare that to everything MS has in China both now and going forward. It would be irresponsible of them to have to pull Windows, Office and all the rest just because they didn't filter Bing; and Bing has a smaller share of the search market share there
than Google.

"... So I trust you are also not doing business with any other company that plays by the rules China lays down in order to operate there. ..."

Granted, I don't have the guts of my convictions to switch to programming google and Linux applications. I don't see the need to not do business with China. ( If the US would only balance its budget it would not have to do things contrary to its morals
and beliefs, like disrespecting the Dalai Lama, at the direction of China. )

I see a search engine as much different than other goods and services. The search engine is what people use to get information. If Microsoft works with the Chinese governemtn to censor that information, that is just terrible.